Hawk Woods is an old-growth forest located in central Athens County, Ohio, outside the city of Athens, Ohio. It comprises 106 acres (about 43 hectares) "within the Low Hills Belt section of the Allegheny Plateau". Of these 106 acres, about 85 acres (34 hectares) are in the area cited as old-growth forest. Adjacent to Strouds Run State Park, the woods now comprise a state nature preserve named the Dale & Jackie Riddle State Nature Preserve.
The preserve is owned and managed by the City of Athens. This Ohio public land was dedicated as a state nature preserve, in part because the Ohio Division of Natural Areas and Preserves donated $50,000 to the purchase price. The property was purchased for $550,000. The preserve is part of the city's east-side Strouds Ridge Preserve project, which to date includes about 325 acres (about 132 hectares) total.
As with many other areas in southeast Ohio, the preserve suffers from white-tail deer overpopulation. A deer exclosure was built to demonstrate the effects of grazing pressure from the deer.
The preserve is known to harbor the relatively rare gametophytic fern species, Trichomanes intricatum.
Famous quotes containing the words hawk and/or woods:
“He will not go,
But wait through fish scale, shale dust, bone
of hawk and marmot,
caught leaves in ice,
Til flung on a new net of atoms:”
—Gary Snyder (b. 1930)
“To enumerate the different trades by which the women in New York are endeavoring—not to live—that for many of them is as utterly unattainable a goal as the end of the rainbow—but simply to postpone as long as possible their appearance at the morgue or the cemetery—to attempt to do this would be useless.”
—Katharine Pearson Woods (1853–1923)